Everything That Rises Must Converge
by narcolepticbadger
Summary: Post Season 2. The administration needs to punish someone for Miss Rosa's escape. Morello gets a one-way ticket to SHU. Nicky, left to her own devices, struggles to keep herself sane. [Lorna/Nicky trying to figure out what they are, but first an exploration of Nicky as a character and her relationships with other inmates when her best-friend-slash-lover isn't around]
1. Confessions

…_She's sweet, but she's fucked up_…

Rumors had been swirling around the prison for days about Miss Rosa, about Vee, about Fig's suspicious 'resignation,' about nuns and hunger strikes and everything in between. The more intrepid conspiracy theorists in Litchfield had found ways to tie all of these seemingly random incidents together in increasingly elaborate webs of corruption, mafia connections, and secret lesbian alliances. And just when things were starting to settle down, someone's visiting mother-in-law slipped the news that Vee had been found dead on the side of the road not two miles south of the prison, and the gossip got worse than ever.

Girls in the cafeteria line traded their fantastic versions of the truth like they used to trade makeup tips:

"Yo, this shit is straight outta _Shawshank Redemption_ – escapin' prisoners, murder, the big boss getting taken down. I bet Miss Rosa is halfway to that little town in Mexico by now."

"You watch, they'll be making a movie about us any day now. _I'm ready for my close-up_, Mr. Caputo!"

"All I'm saying is that those nuns look pretty suspicious. Providing a distraction, that's what they were doing. Hunger strike, my ass."

Morello, one of the few witnesses to Miss Rosa's escape, found herself ambushed by more and more curious inmates wanting the story. "Her doctor told her she only had a few weeks left with the cancer. I think she, uh, just kinda snapped…"

"Yeah, I always kind of thought she had some crazy going on in her eyes," Flaca said, nodding intently. "Did she, like, pull out a shiv and force you outta the van?"

"No, no, there was no shiv. Keys were in the engine, so she probably climbed over the seat and floored it while I was talking to the guard."

"Oh." Flaca left disappointed, but she was replaced by two more girls already burning with questions.

"…and then we found out everything was already on lockdown. Two prisoners escaping in one day. Crazy, huh!" Morello's voice kept getting squeakier, her discomfort obvious from the way she was pushing food around on her tray.

"All right, all right, nothing to see here," Nicky intervened. "Move along, Eyebrows. You too – yeah, _you_, with the lips. She glared at them until they moved to the other side of the cafeteria and made a warning sign at the next gaggle of conspiracy freaks approaching the table. Turning back to Morello, she asked, "Ready to get out of here, kid?"

Morello nodded. "You want my waffle?"

Nicky shrugged and grabbed it – it was cold at this point and starting to get spongy. But food was food… She didn't think she'd ever seen Lorna not finish a meal before, much less refuse to touch it. That girl usually inhaled things like they were going out of style, or like rabid dogs were going to fight her for it if she hesitated.

"Honestly, these people, acting like a cancer-ridden felon on her death bed stealing a prison van is something newsworthy. Geez."

"It was pretty exciting – "

"I know, Morello. It was a joke." She chuckled, shaking her head at how ridiculous people were being. "Miss Rosa, prison folk hero! Pretty soon they're gonna be canonizing her in the chapel, hanging up her mug shot like Doggett with her crucifix."

They ended up back in Nicky's bunk, Morello taking the end of the bed and Nicky slouching back against the pillow. Nicky pulled out a recent – by Litchfield standards – issue of _People_. The way people dressed on the outside these days, it was kind of like looking at a girly magazine if you squinted the right way. Morello idly paged through the word-of-the-day book Red had been using to improve her vocabulary. The way the pages scraped together told Nicky that the girl was thinking of something other than how to incorporate 'malfeasance' into her daily vocabulary, but she was a little too busy with Rihanna to pay much mind.

"That Miss Rosa was a real nice lady." Morello dropped her book on the bed between them and raised her eyes to the ceiling, clearly entering 'pensive discussion' mode. Nicky hoped for a monologue. She wasn't nearly done with her magazine yet.

"Yeah? I didn't know you two were close." Whoever had cropped that picture of Anna Kendrick deserved to be shot.

"Not…close. But driving her to her appointments, we got to talking sometimes, and she was nice to me."

"I'll take your word for it, kid." Nicky remembered Rosa as gruff and disinterested – and the lady had cancer, for Christ's sake, so Nicky didn't blame her – but she wouldn't go around calling Rosa _nice_.

"I wonder what she's doing out there. Do you think she's, like…traveling the world or sneaking around to say goodbye to her family or whatever?

Nicky snorted. "I think it might be hard to do that bucket list shit when your face is plastered all over 'Wanted' posters in the tri-state area." Morello made a non-committal noise that suggested Nicky's answer hadn't satisfied her. Nicky sighed, wondering how she always got dragged into helping Morello maintain her fantasies. "Whatever she's doing, I'm sure it's better than being stuck in here with a death sentence hanging over her."

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so too."

Something in her tone made Nicky finally look up from her magazine. Morello was absently twisting the fabric of her shirt into a knot, her face filled with something like relief, or worry, or…guilt. In that moment, a few things clicked in Nicky's head and _People _was unceremoniously thrown onto the floor.

"Holy shit."

"What?"

"You helped Miss Rosa escape, didn't you?"

"What? No." Morello squirmed slightly under the accusation in Nicky's eyes and voice and managed to look shocked that Nicky would think that of her. "_No. _Like I said, she musta stolen the keys when I wasn't looking. I didn't know."

"No, don't feed me that bullshit." Nicky got up, hands pulling through her hair distractedly, and started pacing. Her body was suddenly restless and crawling with the urge to do something exhaustive like run or scream or hurt things.

"Jesus, how did I not see this before? You and that fucking van – are you ever _not _planning a grand escape with it? I'm surprised you didn't run off with her, all 'fuck the man' like some sad knockoff _Thelma and Louise_. Been feeling like you wanna drive off a cliff lately?" She spat the last part viciously. Part of her regretted saying it immediately, and the other part didn't care because this was so messed up, and if Lorna couldn't see that…

Morello had made herself smaller on the bed. God, she looked so young, sometimes.

Nicky sat down on the other bed, talking herself down from blowing up again. Red always told her to count to ten – which was hilarious coming from Red – but it wasn't a bad idea. _Let your brain catch up with your mouth_, _little girl_.

She took a deep breath. "I didn't mean that. It's just, are you _trying _to get charged with a felony in here?"

Morello's attention remained firmly on her lap. "I didn't plan anything. It was just…her _face_, Nicky, after they told her she only had a few weeks. I couldn't bring her back in here after that, I just couldn't. I thought of it as, I don't know, releasing her into the wild. It's not natural, dyin' in here." She sounded on the verge of tears.

_This kid. _Her heart was in the right place, Nicky thought, but it kept leading her dangerous places.

"She's not a bird, Lorna. She's a tired, old woman with cancer. This isn't a movie where everyone gets to drive off into the sunset for their happy ending."

"Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, but it _felt _right. She deserved something more than this." Morello's chin came up slightly, stubbornly, challenging Nicky to tell her otherwise.

"I'm not disagreeing with you, but they aren't paying you to decide who gets compassionate release."

"You think she's happy?"

She sounded so forlorn that Nicky wanted to go over and comfort her, but she didn't. Distance was better right now. Maybe distance would kick some sense into Morello. Her tendency to romanticize things instead of dealing with reality was starting to seem less like a coping mechanism and more like a sign of something deeper and maybe insidious. Nicky didn't know much about psychology, but some of the things Morello told her, the secrets she slowly revealed, were frankly scary.

But that didn't stop her from responding, "Yeah, I think she's happy." _Way to go, Nichols. Always falling for the crazy ones._

Nicky ran her hands through her hair again, smoothing it in a way that really only riled it up more. "Did you hear about Vee? Ruiz said they found her on the side of the highway, blood coming out of her eyes, and the best part is that no one can explain how she got there. Now _that _is some straight-up _Sopranos _mindfuckery, if you ask me."

She was doing the nervous rambling thing she always did when she felt uncomfortable. Morello tried to smile, but it was a weak attempt. Nicky continued. "You know, the conspiracy nuts have this theory about – "

Neither of them had heard the group of officers – O'Neill, Bennett, and some suit, looking official – approach until Bennett said, "Morello" as sharply as he could, "you're going to SHU."

"For what?" Nicky practically launched herself off the bed. Morello had never gotten so much as a shot before.

"Negligence. She should have stayed in the vehicle with Cisneros until the guard cleared her to leave. If she had, Cisneros would still be here, and we'd all be in a lot less trouble." He motioned to Morello. "Let's go, inmate."

"Oh, and I suppose the guard who was supposed to close the gate behind them and, you know, actually _watch _the prisoners is facing some serious disciplinary action too, right?" Nicky couldn't help herself.

"Who are you, her lawyer?" The suit stepped a little closer to her, hands on his hips. "You looking to go downhill too, inmate?"

Nicky matched his body language and was about to close the distance between them, smart comment pursed on her lips, but O'Neill and Bennett were already wrangling a stricken Morello out of the cube. It was pointless.

Morello, flanked by officers, managed to throw one last panicked glance back at Nicky. She opened her mouth to call out something reassuring, but for once in her life Nicky Nichols found that she had nothing to say.

* * *

Note: Standalone, but presumably set in the same slightly-removed-from-canon world as "Wide-Eyed." I may reference the previous story at some point.

The title comes from the Flannery O'Connor collection of short stories. The line "She's sweet, but she's fucked up" from Wes Anderson's _Rushmore_ kept circling my head in regards to Lorna, especially because it sounds like something Nicky would say. This led to a bunch of relevant Wes Anderson movie quotes flooding in, which may show up as subtitles or chapter titles for each part. I haven't planned that far ahead yet.

Hope you enjoyed this and will continue reading!


	2. The First Week

…_With friends like you, who needs friends?..._

Nicky sat on her bed, knees drawn to her chest, all the fight drained out of her. She stared at nothing in particular, her mind empty.

Occasionally other women glanced into her cube and whispered to each other, hurrying on when they saw her posture and furrowed brow. The news had obviously spread.

She knew firsthand what SHU did to people. It took things from you. It made you question things that you shouldn't have to question. It made you talk to the walls just so you could hear something other than the psych-case screams and remind yourself that you were alive. That's what SHU did to people – people who had a strong grip on reality going in, which, let's face it, Morello didn't exactly qualify for anymore, and Nicky didn't want to think about that. How much worse it would be for someone who already lived two steps away from reality.

The stares were becoming more frequent, more annoying, and the thought that someone might work up the stones to talk to her finally drove Nicky to the chapel with her music. She turned the volume all the way up, totally defeating the purpose of headphones, but she wore them anyway. The music was shitty but loud enough to become almost physical, almost painful. It poured through her, and she could pretend that it was filling her with something other than emptiness.

It probably would have been better if she had stayed that way, dead inside.

...

Chapman caught up with her in the breakfast line the next morning. "Hey, I heard Morello got sent to SHU. That's awful. Any idea how long they're going to keep her there?"

"Because this prison really values transparency in its dealings with inmates? What kind of question is that, Chapman?" Nicky hoped her tone would be enough to warn Piper off. It would have worked on most people, she was sure, but Piper, with her sympathetic eyes and eagerness to fix things, had trouble knowing when to stop.

"Right, that was stupid." She sounded appropriately guilty, but continued. "I just wanted to know if you knew how serious it was."

Nicky silently collected her orange slices and coffee and willed the other woman to change the subject or, even better, pause for breath long enough for Nicky to make her escape.

"I've always admired the way she seems so cheerful all the time. It's like this place can't get her down, you know? And really, I never thought I'd make it through a day in SHU, let alone a month. Lorna's going to be – "

"You missed your calling as a psych patient, I'm telling you," Nicky broke in sharply, finally turning her full attention to Piper and staring her down. "Then you could spend all day talking about your 'problems' and sharing your little self-absorbed observations about life with people who might actually give a shit."

She shoved her tray violently back at Daya, who let out a pissed "Hey!" as coffee splashed over her gloves.

"I'm out, Chapman." She held up her hands and turned away, aware that a roomful of eyes followed her all the way out of the cafeteria.

...

Anger was good. Anger was productive. Most importantly, anger was easy.

This was who she was, after all. The problem child with a mom who didn't do mom things. She was used to teachers and COs throwing around labels like 'hotheaded' and 'disruptive' and 'poor impulse control,' and she took a certain pride in it all. It got their attention. And sometimes getting attention meant having power which meant being respected. Or something like that. It made her feel better anyway, more in control.

This was who she was. Sure, she could pretend to be the junkie philosopher that Jones thought she was, and she could pretend to be a good daughter for Red because she owed her that, and she could pretend to be grounded around Lorna because, hell, one of them had to be halfway sane to make it work. But being responsible and 'adult' wasn't instinctual, and damn it if it didn't feel like a burden sometimes. Maybe most of the time.

It was too early to do anything besides wander the halls, avoiding other inmates and COs like her life depended on it. She told herself it was chance that led her to the abandoned laundry room – she had wandered almost everywhere else, why not here? But she had always known she would come back for the heroin she and Boo had stashed away, known from the second she had first seen those bags that she would come back for them. She didn't know what she was going to do with it yet – it might be enough to see it, to hold it heavy in her hands, the pounds and pounds heavy enough to keep her from flying off in every direction like her body wanted to.

She flattened herself along the floor to look into the grate where it was hidden. Correction: where it _had _been hidden. There was nothing there.

She felt relieved for maybe a split-second before her junkie brain took over, again crawling with that familiar urge to get out of her skin. It was like the way caged animals keep pacing even though they have nowhere to go. She didn't feel relieved; she felt cheated.

She pushed herself up, knowing exactly who she needed to talk to. She rounded the corner of washers and dryers and nearly smacked into Bennett, who looked just as surprised and distracted as she felt.

"Why aren't you at breakfast, inmate?"

"I thought I lost something in the laundry. I thought I'd come down to look for it before everyone else showed up for work." She had always been a quick liar. She shrugged, feigning indifference. "No dice."

He looked at her for a minute with something curiously like pity before dismissing her with a nod.

"Don't let me find you out-of-bounds again, Nichols," he called after her, and she wondered if it sounded as weak a threat to him as it did to her.

Two minutes later she stood in the doorway of Boo's cube, seething at the woman lounging there so casually. Boo had never quite been family the way Red was, but Nicky had trusted her. She should have learned her lesson after the incident with Vee. "Where is it?" she demanded, her voice less controlled than she'd like it to be.

Boo answered attitude with attitude. "The fuck you talking about, Nichols?"

Nicky moved closer so no one would overhear them. This was personal. "Got a little taste of betrayal and decided to keep going, huh? _The stash_," she hissed.

"Haven't touched it. You wanna search me?" Boo's tone was light, but there was a warning in her eyes as she slowly got up and, arms spread wide, stood toe-to-toe with Nicky. "It was in an unscrewed air vent, not Fort Knox, genius. Anyone could have taken it."

"No one knew about it except for us."

Boo barked a laugh into her face. "Please. You know those meth mouths down in laundry are like bloodhounds when it comes to the good stuff. Why don't you go talk to them?"

Nicky could tell that Boo was telling the truth, but she didn't back down. Something in her was spoiling for a fight, even though she was pretty sure Boo could put her down. Maybe that was what she wanted.

"You got something else you wanna say, Nichols?" Boo baited her, their gazes still locked intensely.

After a beat, Nicky made herself look away. "No," she rasped in a way that really meant _yes_.

"Good. I get it – your little groupie finally got herself thrown in SHU, and you have to act all tough, like it doesn't bother you. Okay. Throw your tantrums, get in the COs faces, do what you gotta do. But you come back in here like a little bitch, trying to start something, _I'll_ be the one to end it. Got that, son?"

"Whatever," she muttered as she walked out, fists clenched against the fabric of her khakis, and she heard Boo throw something that sounded like _pathetic _at her back.

...

It all went downhill from there.

She spent her time in electric drilling Luschek another glory hole and avoiding Piper's wounded deer eyes from across the room. The vibrations from the drill left her hands red and hurting, and she liked that. Some days there was blood under her nails by the time she finished. There was a certain novelty in feeling anything besides pissed off these days.

Luschek had confronted her after the first day of drilling, claiming that the noise was driving him insane and that if she kept going, he couldn't be held accountable for his actions.

"I'm making you another glory hole, all right? You should be thanking me," she told him. And then, unable to stop, decided to tell the truth, sort-of. "Or maybe I think this place isn't quite shitty enough yet, so I'm doing my best to leave a mark, okay?"

He took in her fierce glare, her more-unkempt-than-usual hair, her shaking hands and nodded once.

Luschek was almost as bad as Bennett sometimes, letting her get away with things.

After three years in this place, she knew the list of offenses that would send her to SHU by heart. She didn't want to go back there, not really, but she couldn't seem to stop edging that line, pushing the boundaries to see where the weakness was. She stopped talking to everyone except to snark at inmates and COs alike, cruel for the sake of cruelty, and hardly anyone called her out. The COs looked at her hard and wrote things in their little notebooks, but she didn't get even one shot, let alone the two or three she thought she had coming. She wondered if Red was somehow still pulling strings from her hospital bed and resented the idea bitterly.

She sat alone in the cafeteria, purposely searching out the empty tables and abandoning her food if anyone tried to join her. Most people learned quickly. Yoga Jones kept at it, waiting until Nicky was almost done and then sliding wordlessly across from her.

"We don't have to talk. I just thought you could use the company," she said softly one time, but that didn't stop Nicky from walking away again.

A girl she didn't know drove in with a new group of women. She fucked two of them, and it wasn't about charming them and collecting orgasms this time. She found the two as desperate as she was – though their desperation was of a different kind – and didn't bother to ask their names or remember their faces as they took turns, each trying to feel or escape from feeling. She was preying on the weak, she knew, and wondered if that made her weak too. That thought left her hunched over the toilet one afternoon, needing to get the taste out of her mouth but unable to throw up, making regret another thing she couldn't do right.

...

Red came back.

She sought Nicky out before Nicky even knew she had been released. She felt both trapped and freed when Red appeared in her cube and pulled her into a firm hug, saying, "You look like shit, my girl."

"I guess I take after my mother, then," she tried to joke. It came out flat and wrong. She couldn't stop focusing on Red's new scars, the ugly way they cut through the skin. Like she needed another reminder that her family in here was fragile.

They sat on Nicky's bed together and for a moment everything almost felt like it used to. They talked about Piper.

"She means well," Red said, waving her hand with a fondness Nicky didn't remember. "Some of the things that come out of her mouth make me want to pull that pretty blond hair out and gag her with it, I'll admit, but on the whole there are a lot worse people to be stuck with."

Nicky mostly listened, not finding much to say. Red had her ways of getting information even in the medical ward. She already knew everything.

They fell into silence, and finally Red sighed.

"Don't go making things harder for yourself, Nicky. Lorna will do her time, and she'll come back, and terrorizing the prison isn't going to make that happen any sooner. Keep your head down. If you need to take your anger or whatever this is out on some carrots and cabbage heads with a big knife, I can talk to Mendoza."

She briefly rested a hand on Nicky's head, not smoothing her hair but just holding it there as if to steady one or both of them, before she left Nicky alone.

The next day Nicky started wearing her eyeliner thicker, feeling like a rebellious teenager who was not entirely sure what she was rebelling against.

...

The explosion happened on a Thursday, six days after Morello got sent to SHU.

It was taco night, which usually meant the day was less shitty than normal, especially since Mendoza and her people had taken over the kitchen and the tacos started to taste like real tacos.

Nicky was scouting for an empty table when she passed a young Latina holding her audience rapt with what Nicky assumed would be a story about Bennett's massive dick or whatever fresh gossip was circling the prison. Then she overheard what they were actually talking about.

" – and she, like, lied about their whole relationship. She tried to blow up his _wife_."

"Oh, shit! No wonder the COs never call her on that red lipstick. Fuckin' psycho, man."

Nicky didn't remember moving, but suddenly her tray crashed down on the table so hard it bounced, upsetting two more trays, tomatoes and water and ground beef flying everywhere as plastic knives and cups clattered to the floor. Half the table jumped up, screaming about stains on their uniforms.

"What did you say?" There was an angry snap of punctuation after each word, her jaw clenched into a snarl like an animal.

Two COs closed in fast, attracted by the commotion, but somehow Chapman appeared at her side before they got there.

"What the hell is going on here?"

"Nichols bumped into me and spilled her tray," Piper said, her fingers digging sharply into Nicky's arm while she lied. "It was an accident."

It should have been funny. Piper was still out-of-breath from her apparent sprint across the cafeteria to rescue Nicky, and the amount of carnage in front of them proved that this was anything but an accident. But Piper's eyes were wide and innocent, her words so smooth and pretty that Nicky almost believed her. The Latinas stayed silent, clearly fuming but unwilling to get into it with two crazy white chicks. Chapman had definitely earned some credibility after beating Pennsatucky half to death, and Nicky wasn't doing too badly herself.

The CO pulled out his notepad. "That's a shot, Nichols."

"Good," she spat before Piper could drag her away.

"Watch yourself, inmate."

Piper kept a firm grip on her arm all the way to the cafeteria doors before Nicky struggled free.

"I didn't ask for your help," she said, not even looking at Piper as she stalked back to the dorms.

...

Alex came back too.

Nicky was excited at first, catching a glimpse of the unmistakably tall woman with the hipster glasses and you-can-fuck-me-but-don't-fuck-_with_-me swagger before she even made it back inside the walls. If Vause had fucked up badly enough to end up in prison again this soon, no doubt she would be holding a grudge against someone, and they could be pissed at the world together.

But it didn't take long to see that Alex wasn't all that upset to be back. She looked comfortable, happy even, especially when she and Piper were reunited. Suddenly Nicky was faced with their small gestures of affection everywhere she looked, and – reminded of what she was missing – she found herself going out of her way to avoid Alex instead of welcoming her back.

She lay stretched out on her bunk, connecting spots on the ceiling tiles into weird constellations, when Alex came to her, merely propping her arms on the wall of the cube and staring down her glasses at Nicky, half-serious and half-amused.

"You can't even say hi to your old friends, huh? You have got it bad."

"What do I have bad, exactly?"

"Whatever this new _'I hate the world and all you motherfuckers in it'_ thing is you've got going on."

"Your girlfriend tell you that?"

The corner of Alex's mouth twitched like she was trying not to smile. "Yeah, Piper told me that, along with, let's see, everyone else."

Nicky didn't reply.

"What's wrong? By all accounts you should be biting my head off by now. Losing your touch?"

Nicky shrugged, but Alex was apparently unfazed by this very one-sided conversation. If anything, she seemed highly entertained by the whole situation.

"Which one of your girlfriends are you thinking about now?" Alex asked in a way that reminded Nicky just how well the other woman could read her.

"Morello," she admitted finally, her mouth twisting slightly around the word, and it was the closest she'd come to cracking a smile in days. "But heroin dominated much of the morning. I'd say it's ahead by a nose."

Alex nodded sagely. "From what Piper told me, this place fucking fell apart after I left."

"Yeah, Vause, you sure were the glue holding Litchfield together."

Alex had a point, though. She had left before things had gotten so complicated, and somehow that made her safe ground. Safe_r_ ground, at any rate. Nicky could almost talk to her like nothing had changed.

She pushed herself up on an elbow so she could look at Alex more easily. "You walked back in here like it's all okay, like you want to be here. That's sick."

Alex laughed. "You're telling me. At least in here I get to have sex with my hot girlfriend, and I'm pretty sure no one is going to murder me in the night."

Nicky raised a skeptical eyebrow, thinking of Piper and Pennsatucky and Vee and all the other crazy and violent shit that had gone down recently.

Alex laughed again at her expression. "Like I said, pretty sure." She cocked her head slightly, hardly able to contain her smile. "I heard you flipped your tray. Is that like throwing your pie for someone?"

Nicky flopped back down against the bed. "Maybe."

"God, I wish had been there." Alex shook her head admiringly, as if she were imagining the chaos in front of her.

They stayed like that for a little bit, neither offering anything new to talk about. They had run out of easy topics.

Alex cleared her throat, looked down at her hands, her voice low and thoughtful. "Listen, I know what it's like to be hated in here, and it's not worth it. This place is lonely enough already." She seemed to know better than to wait for a response from Nicky, simply pausing to shoot a stern "Stop being a dick to Piper" over the wall before moving on.

...

Her life had become a series of small interventions. Alex was merely the last in line. She supposed she should be grateful that they hadn't coordinated their efforts, ganged up on her all at once. It would have been a nightmare.

Still, she was surprised to find Red, looking every inch the dangerous Russian her reputation built her up as, waiting for her in her bunk when she returned from a late-night meander through the hallways. Intervention, round two, she guessed, and decided to get straight to the point.

"What, going to punish me for yelling in the cafeteria? Take away my eyeliner again?" She grabbed the tube off her desk and threw it down at Red's feet. The tube left a smear of black on the floor as it cracked open. "Here. It's yours."

Everything about Red was held back, ruthlessly controlled, the way it was whenever she was truly livid. "Who are you so angry at? Me? Lorna? Yourself? The system? Fine! Be angry. But stop being stupid. I didn't take you in as my daughter to have you causing nothing but trouble for me. I've had enough trouble. So cut the shit and start acting like someone who belongs in my family."

Words came thick and fast, breaking out of her almost painfully after days of being pushed back. "Yeah, well, I didn't come in here asking to be your daughter, okay? _You_ took that on, and if you're sick of dealing with my 'shit' then maybe it's time I left."

Red slapped her, hard enough to make her eyes water. But she could see clearly. She pushed past Red, knocking their shoulders together, her momentum violent and unstoppable as a storm.

Red called her name, just once. Then, quieter: "You're the one walking away. Remember that."

* * *

Note: And so Phase One of Nicky's 'coping' is inarticulate anger and isolating herself from everyone she cares about. Yeah. Umm…it gets better?

"With friends like you, who needs friends?" is also from Rushmore, continuing our inexplicable Wes Anderson theme.

The next update is going to be delayed a bit. I'll be traveling for at least a week without my laptop, which obviously kind of impedes the time/means I have available for writing. I'll try my best to get the next chapter up soon after I return.

To all my silent readers out there: I love you! But it would also be great to hear from you. As a writer, I really value input from readers – what you like, what you think needs work, ideas for what you might like to see, etc. So if you have a little extra time, please send any and all thoughts my way. I would really, really appreciate it! Thanks for reading.


	3. The Second Week

Note: Thanks for your patience! This one got a little weird and book-y. Still using _Rushmore _quotes at the beginning. Always look forward to hearing your thoughts, especially if you have ideas for this story or prompts for other stories you'd like to see. I pretty much know where I'm going with this one, but a little extra inspiration is always nice!

* * *

…_I'm a little bit lonely these days…_

Nicky lingered in the entrance to the Suburbs until she was sure Piper was alone in her cube. She hadn't seen Red in the two days since their blowout, and if the sudden scarcity of Norma and Gina was any indication, Red and the family were going out of their way to avoid her as well.

Piper, busily scrawling away in a dog-eared composition book, remained oblivious until Nicky awkwardly cleared her throat. She wasn't there to apologize – not in so many words, at least – she was just looking for a distraction. "Hey. Chapman. You got any books I can borrow?"

Piper's eyes widened slightly at the sound of Nicky's voice, a brief look of something like panic rippling across her face. But Nicky had to give her credit – Piper was quick to let things go between them, hesitating only a little before she recovered with a bemused but genuine smile.

"Oh. Um. Sure. Take a look at the ones over there, and I'll get the other box out from under the bed."

Nicky moved over to the stack of books on the storage cabinet and began perusing titles and cover art. She didn't know what she was looking for, exactly. She wanted to escape, and as Litchfield was running short on getaway vans and secret tunnels of late, she thought this might be the next best option.

Piper laid more books out on her bed and hovered but was mercifully silent. A pale blue cover caught Nicky's attention, and she fished it out of the pile. There was a picture of a white bird, mid-flight, with an arrow piercing its heart and the words _Everything That Rises Must Converge_. The image was attractive for reasons she couldn't quite place.

"Hmm." Nicky held the book up for Piper to inspect.

"Flannery O'Connor? Oh, she's great." Before Nicky could pocket the book, Piper held up a hand. "Wait. Are you the kind of person who likes to read depressing shit when you're depressed? Because her stories are all…death and racism and miserable, terrible people. With a side of Jesus."

"But great," Nicky deadpanned as she dropped the book back onto the bed. Her eyes wandered over more titles: _Atonement_,_ The Depths of Despair_,_ The Virgin Suicides. _"I'm sensing a pattern here. What kind of fucked-up friends do you have, sending you books like this?"

"They mean well. But people don't really get what it's like, you know? They have a shitty day at the office and go home and watch some sad bullshit television show, and it's like schadenfreude, and they can forget about their stupid little problems for a while. They don't get that it's different in here."

They stood over the sea of books for a long moment before Piper intervened again. "Look, why don't you go to the library while I try to find something here that you might be interested in?"

Nicky nodded and shuffled out of the cube. Piper was being nice to her, and part of her felt bad that she wasn't doing more to extend the olive branch herself, but all she really wanted was a book and her headphones and an empty bunk where no one would bother her, and the less talking it took to get those things, the better.

...

"Self-help section is that way."

Poussey's voice was neutral, but there was a hint of laughter in her eyes. Ever since the cafeteria incident and her rapid deflation from prison terror to hermit who hardly left her cube, Nicky had the distinct impression that a good percentage of the inmates were laughing at her. She couldn't blame them.

"Does it look like I'm in need of the self-help gurus?"

"Shit, man, a body'd have to be blind to miss the rampage you been on since your girl got sent away. You need some kinda help."

Nicky sighed. "I'm looking for something that will stop me from climbing the fucking walls. You got any recommendations for that?"

Poussey shrugged, drawing her words out long and slow. "Maybe. Fiction or nonfiction?"

"Uh, fiction?"

Poussey smirked down at the cart she was sorting, pulled one of the books, and flipped it up at Nicky's chest. Nicky barely managed to snag it out of the air before it fell to the ground. She groaned when she saw the title.

"_One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_. Hilarious."

She made to drop the book on the nearest table in disgust, but Poussey managed to stop laughing long enough to protest. "Don't be like that! Ain't you seen the movie? You don't wanna miss out on a classic just 'cause you're projecting your inner turmoil and shit all over the place."

"Classic, huh? What else you got?"

"Can you give me _something _more to go on than 'I want a book that makes me feel less crazy'?"

"I don't know, normal books? What does everyone else read in here?"

Poussey, realizing that Nicky was going to be absolutely no help in this venture, started to wind through the stacks, plucking a few things from the shelves as they went and pushing them into Nicky's arms without comment. Nicky was left to look at the increasingly bizarre titles and wonder what exactly she was getting herself into.

When Poussey stopped to consult Taystee for more ideas, Nicky finally interrupted. "So far you've given me a book on rabbits and another one that I can't pronounce but can only assume is the name of some flesh-eating bacteria. Can we manage something maybe a little more sexy?"

"Uh-uh," Taystee said, "the higher-ups don't want no sex books in their library." She leaned closer to Nicky even though the three of them were already alone in that section of the stacks. "Chapman'll sort you out with the naughty stuff. Got me my _50 Shades_. And don't be dissing _Watership Down_ in front of Poussey – bitch cried for a week straight while she was reading it."

"Aww, man, c'mon, T! Why you gotta be telling everyone that? You know it was only because my daddy read that to me growing up, and I was feeling all nostalgic." Poussey had turned away from them, running her hands over her buzzed hair. "I didn't embarrass you for crying over Dumbledore even though you done read the books 8 times!"

And while the two descended into an argument over whose grief was more valid, Nicky decided to make her exit. She just wanted to go back to her bunk and shut everything out besides the stories about stupid rabbits and mental institutions she was now carrying with her, but it seemed that she couldn't help making one last stop along the way.

Why did it sometimes feel like everything in this prison led back to Piper Chapman?

...

The stack of books under her bed had grown considerably after her second visit to Piper. At first it was hard not to read just a few pages of one before throwing it down and reaching for another, as if a constant kaleidoscope of changing characters and settings would somehow calm her down instead of making her sicker, but she forced herself to stick to one book at a time. She plowed through page after page, hardly taking in what she read. It was the action that mattered – turning pages, shifting her eyes across and down until they burned, sucking absently at the papercuts that raced across her knuckles.

Of course her brain was looking for some way to translate this into a new drug. Somehow if she read fast enough, consumed enough words, she'd get high. It would change things. So she made reading into something violent. Drowned the voices inside with other voices. Surrounded herself with made-up people and problems so she wouldn't feel so goddamn lonely. Is this what it was like for Lorna?

She probably would have had weird dreams if she slept, but every time she tried it became the kind of sleep where you lie on your back and stare at the ceiling and wait for morning to come, never sure if your eyes ever close at all. She supposed some sleep must have snuck in here and there because she was still functioning, still walking and going to work and sort-of eating, but she could never pinpoint when it actually happened – it all felt like interminable waiting.

She always sat with Alex and Piper at meals now. They had never quite become part of Red's family, so no one was breaking any rules. Yoga Jones and Sister sometimes joined them, but if the arrangement was making life difficult for any of them, they didn't mention it. Nicky wondered if Red had sent them herself, to keep an eye on Nicky in that inscrutable and removed Russian way of hers, and she wished, not for the first time, that she had kicked her paranoid tendencies (at least when it came to mothers) along with her heroin addiction.

They didn't push her. They talked around her, leaving openings for her to jump in, but she never did unless they asked a direct question. Words stuck in her throat these days, like the food.

"So, Nichols," Alex said one day with her usual archness, "are you improving your mind with all that extensive reading you're doing? Learned anything new?"

Nicky kept digging her fork around her reconstituted mashed potatoes. "America gets its rocks off on reading about kids killing kids and mommy porn. That's fucking grim."

And that ended that discussion.

No one talked about Lorna either. It was strange how keeping company with the others only made things worse, made it all the clearer how much dead air there was in the space Lorna left behind. Eating wasn't the same without her. Nothing was the same without her.

...

She chased herself out of bed to read in the chapel, reluctantly, and only because she suspected she might develop bed sores if she stayed in her bunk any longer. She was barely two steps inside, doors still swinging against each other in her wake, when all the air in the room got sucked out.

She thought for a second that maybe sleep had finally caught up with her and nightmares were her reward, but then it _hurt_, just trying to breathe, it all hurt, and she knew it was real.

She thought about her heart, as far as thinking could go when the world suddenly decided to change directions, and she was on the ground now, clutching uselessly at carpet and wood, all the colors were confused, and there was a jackhammer in her chest, her _heart_, finally fucked up enough that it would just stop – and wasn't it funny, it was going to fail when she was sober and maybe starting to get things right and use it properly – and the only sound was the blood jackhammering through her ears, there was no breathing, there was no white light, and everything was _gone gone gone_

…

"Nicky."

"Nicky, can you hear me?"

"Nicky, you need to take some deep breaths. Do it with me."

The sounds reminded her of the ocean as they rocked against her, and she was shaking – being shaken? – as she opened her eyes to see Chapman crouched in front of her, gripping her shoulders and asking her to breathe.

"Piper," she rasped after a few long moments of them breathing into each other's faces, "you can stop looking like you have a dead body on your hands. I'm fine."

Piper slumped down onto the floor next to her. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Yeah, me too." Nicky frowned. "I don't know what happened."

"Panic attack. Your first time?"

"Yeah."

They sat in silence, both trying to collect themselves. Nicky, still sweating and trembling, felt the familiar sense of humiliation and failure creeping up her back just like it had all those times she'd woken up weak and confused in hospital beds with a disapproving mother standing over her or yelling over the phone. Chapman was definitely an improvement in that department. As Red had said, there were much worse people to be stuck with.

"Jesus, that was worse than overdosing."

"I'll take your word for it."

"You ever have one of these before, Chapman? You certainly knew how to handle it."

Piper smiled at her. "Besides the one I had my first day here? Yeah, a few. When your girlfriend works for an international drug cartel, it's kind of in the job description." She fiddled with the hem of her shirt, in a gesture that reminded Nicky so powerfully of Lorna that she had to look away. "And you didn't see me when we first found you – all the hand-wringing, chicken-with-its-head-cut-off flailing stuff. Can we pretend that part didn't happen?"

Nicky snorted, still fixated on the chapel doors rather than Piper. "Can we pretend _all_ of this didn't happen?"

"I'm not going to tell anyone." Piper suddenly looked around the chapel as if she thought they were being watched. "I sent Alex for water at least ten minutes ago. Where the hell is she?"

"And you and Alex were coming to the chapel because…?"

Piper rolled her eyes. "Seriously? We were just going to – oh, forget it!" She threw up her hands when she saw Nicky's expression. "You know what we were going to do," she muttered darkly as she pushed herself up. "Want some help back to your bunk?"

"No, I'm good, I –" Nicky sighed as Piper stared her down, hands on her hips. "Okay, Chapman, this is the part where you see that I'm lying and cleverly devise a way to help me despite my protests."

"You're hopeless, Nichols. Absolutely hopeless." Piper helped pull her upright and wrapped an arm around Nicky when she saw how unsteady Nicky still was.

Hopeless. _You're telling me, kid_, was all Nicky could think.

"Now act casual. Everyone's going to think we just fucked."

They made it back to Nicky's cube with surprisingly few run-ins with curious inmates or knowing looks from COs. Nicky collapsed on the bed, exhausted, wishing Lorna was there to be her big spoon or to lull her to sleep with incessant chatter about wedding dresses and Bora Bora Bora – those speeches never failed to knock her out, and she could use a good knocking out at the moment. Piper stood half-in, half-out of the cube, quickly re-approaching her hand-wringing state of uncertainty as she wondered whether Nicky would accept any more comforting gestures from her.

"You don't need to babysit me, Piper. I'm a big girl."

Piper nodded, and half-turned to go before suddenly blurting, "Maybe you should come to yoga with me."

Nicky turned awkwardly in bed to give Piper the full force of her contempt. "That's quite possibly the worst idea I've ever heard."

Piper nodded again, as if to say _fair enough_, but Nicky didn't miss the quiet "Think about it" that trailed behind her as she left.

"Hey, Piper," she called back. "Thanks."

...

She went to yoga.

She made the mistake of taking her place next to perfect Piper at the front of the class. There was no one to ogle, no asses to admire as she stood wobbling beside Piper's rock-solid forms, trying to contort her body into some impossible lightning-bolt shape. She didn't even have time to lust after Yoga Jones, although she did finally learn what 'chaturanga' meant. It wasn't nearly as sexy as she had hoped.

She swore she could hear Boo laughing at her, and the woman wasn't even in the room.

When the session was over, Piper turned to her, oblivious to her struggles, and said, "That was fun, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yeah, it was _great_. Especially 'child's pose' – I really nailed that one."

Yoga Jones came over to join them. "You know, Morello has problems with keeping 'soft eyes' too. You're just thinking too hard about the movements."

"Somehow I doubt the problems in my life arise because I'm 'thinking too hard.' Thanks anyway, Jones."

She hurried away before she could embarrass herself further, vowing never to return to that particular class again.

...

She was passing Boo's cube when she heard a loud, "Bitch, you stole the best pussy from me again with those last girls," explode from her left. Well, she could hardly ignore _that _sort of summons.

"You rang, Boo?" she asked casually as she strolled into the cube.

Boo, looking decidedly peeved, crossed her arms. "Guess I was wrong about the whole 'desperation drives them away' thing."

"Hey, take it up with the girls, okay? They chose me. I just went along for the ride."

"Bullshit."

Nicky groaned. Boo was not going to make this easy for her. "Look, I heard there's a new van of girls coming in later. Wanna check it out?"

Boo smirked. "With you, Oh Monogamous One?"

"No, see, _monogamous _means I only have one partner. You can't accuse me of sleeping with two girls and then accuse me of mating for life in the same conversation."

Boo held up a finger and used her mock-sagacious tone, which mostly just made her sound a little like Chang. "Ah. But monogamy of the vagina and monogamy of the heart are two different things, young grasshopper."

"Seriously? That's just creepy, Boo."

"Cut the shit, Nichols. You may still be collecting orgasms, but we all know who you're really holding out for. You haven't fucked anyone and meant it since that girl walked in here, and you know it."

Nicky didn't know how to respond to that. Which Boo interpreted as permission to keep rolling along, barely pausing for breath. "I heard about your little swooning fit. Are you trying to steal the plot of a Victorian novel? What's next, wandering the moors in a delirium, calling out for your lost love? Mad woman in the attic – well, we've already got a few of those. Tuberculosis? That would show some commitment. You _are_ aware that all those stories end in tragedy, right?"

Nicky held up hers hands in surrender. "All right, all right, Jesus, can you just _stop_?"

Boo immediately shrugged and switched gears. "Sure, son. What say we go fetch us some pussy?"

"I'm just there to look, not bite, this time. I'll let you have all the pretty ones." Her own slight acknowledgement that not everything Boo had said was full of crap.

"Let me? The day you _let me_ have anything is the day I…" Nicky couldn't hear exactly how Boo finished that threat as the older woman disappeared from view, leading the way down to the transfer cells. Nicky hurried to catch up.

"Hey, that thing we talked about before…my mistake, yeah?"

"Please. If I ever find out who took that shit, I'll neuter them myself. Man, when I think of how _set _we would've been with that in our pockets…"

Boo waited until they were almost to the rooms before she brought her guns out again. "_Soooooooo_, I hear you're Chapman's new yoga buddy."

Nicky was never going to live that one down.


	4. The Third Week

Note: This was a troublesome chapter. I still think it's kind of a mess, but I got tired of looking at it, so I'm releasing it into the wild.

* * *

…_She's in love with a dead guy anyway…_

Every morning Nicky found herself taking an inventory of how fucked her situation was.

Still on the outs with Red and the family? Check.

Still averaging two hours of sleep per night, disturbing dreams and all? Check.

Still the butt of all Big Boo's jokes and consistent feature of the latest prison gossip? Check.

Still pining after a straight girl? Check. Check. Check.

But there really wasn't anything she could do besides pull on her boots, shove down some oatmeal while trying not to gag on its snot-like texture, and report to work. It wasn't much, this routine, but at least she didn't have to think.

...

She sat on the dryer, kicking her legs against it with satisfyingly weighty _bangs_ that echoed like gunshots in the enclosed space. She wondered how long Alex would let it go before the noise drove her insane – from the way her shoulders kept rising, flinch by flinch – she would snap any second now.

Nicky had jumped at the chance to get out of the workroom, claiming the noise of the other inmates bashing away at their lamps and dropping wrenches was giving her a headache. Piper had shot her a pointed look.

Nicky had held up her hands innocently as she backed towards the door. "Don't look so worried, Chapman. I'll take a hands-off approach."

Piper had slowly stood up, speaking urgently to Luschek as she inched towards Nicky. "Maybe I should go with her. You know how complicated those machines can be – "

"Nice try, Blondie. This isn't some lesbian three-way field trip." Luschek had thrust his hands deep into his pockets and turned away from her, muttering, "Dear God, how I wish it was."

Nicky had practically sprinted out of electric before slowing down to relish her escape – however temporary – from that particular breed of depressing monotony. She loved how jealous she could make Piper simply by hijacking her chance to pay a little midday visit to Alex. She shouldn't enjoy pushing Piper's buttons as much as she did, but that shit just did not get old in here.

"Okay, _okay_, Nicky, I give up! Just stop it with the fucking dryer!" Alex had finally reached boiling point and threw a wad of dirty laundry at Nicky's head.

Nicky dodged it with a laugh. "Just seeing how long it would take to get your attention. You held out a lot longer than I thought. My legs were getting tired."

"As long as you were amused," Alex said, and there was an edge to it, but she mostly looked like she was trying to cover up her smile. "I thought you were supposed to be fixing that dryer, not beating a confession out of it."

"Hey, I tried, didn't I?" Nicky gestured to her dismantled tool belt and the scattering of washers and bolts next to her. "Besides, it's not like Luschek is going to come down and check on us anytime soon. And if he does, you just have to shake that sweet ass at him, and he'll forget all about the dryer."

Alex shook her head. "I don't know how you put up with it. I mean, working laundry is disgusting, and I have to listen to the Jesus freaks debate whether Noah ate any of the animals on the ark before they found land, but at least Luschek isn't staring at my tits all day."

"Eh, he isn't all bad."

"Right."

"I think Piper was ready to cut me when I stepped in the middle of your little laundry room rendezvous. Should I watch my back?"

"Nah, she'll have forgotten all about it by this time tomorrow. Why were you in such a hurry to come see me?"

"I like talking to you, Vause. You're less full of shit than, like, ninety percent of the people in here. A girl needs a solid conversation partner now and again."

Alex cocked her head at Nicky, eyebrows raised. "Only ninety percent?"

Nicky grinned back at her, then turned her attention to what she was really curious about. "You and Chapman are in this, like, one-upmanship competition of who can be shittier to the other person. I don't get how that works for you."

"I don't either, sometimes."

"Chapman's the reason you're back in here – utopia though it may be. I mean, she reported you for parole violation, and you came waltzing in, back to her side, and you've been playing lovebirds ever since. That doesn't seem fucked up to you?"

"Oh, we had words. Lots of them. The kind you regret right away, but you can't stop yourself from saying, you know? And then there was the angry, confused, hot sex, which became less so over time – less angry, not any less hot, not sure about the confused part yet – and here we are." Alex turned to face at her, hands full of khaki, looking thoughtful. "We'll be at each other's throats sooner or later because that's how it is with us, but today is good, and I'm going to ride the good as long as possible."

"And that's your relationship?"

Alex pursed her lips, challenging her without words. _You got something better?_

And Nicky had nothing to say to that.

"You've been in here a long time. What were you like before she came?" There was no need to clarify which _she _they were talking about.

"Angry. Angrier," she qualified after seeing Alex's skeptical expression. "Spent more time alone, spent a _lot_ more time fucking any hot little thing that looked my way."

"And then Morello swanned in, and everything was different."

Nicky shrugged, resenting just a bit that Alex acted like she knew what it was like, what was between them. Suddenly she didn't feel like talking any more.

She went back to pushing the washers around on top of the dryer, metal scraping against metal, but her eyes shifted to the corner of the room where a certain air vent was located. She could pretend she was over it, that she'd given up the heroin as a lost cause, but her eyes gave her away every time. She couldn't stop looking – looking at air vents and cracks in the floor like the stash was going to jump out of them at any moment, looking at the other women to see if they were getting high, looking, looking, looking for things she wasn't sure existed at all.

...

She was bent over a table with Boo and Piper playing dirty Scrabble, feeling pretty pleased with herself about building _blowjob _off of Piper's _breast _but now struggling to use her other 'j' anywhere on the board, when she realized she had forgotten Lorna.

She hadn't thought about her since the brief, now familiar memory of her she always had when she woke up, and that had been six hours ago. And it would have been okay on a normal day, before Lorna had got sent to SHU, but not after she had spent the last seventeen days thinking about Lorna all the time, missing her, developing a freaking Lorna complex that had put her at odds with near half of the prison population. So, no, it wasn't okay.

"Come the fuck on, Nichols, you're just stalling for time!" Boo snapped next to her.

Like someone had pulled a trigger in her, Nicky stood up fast, knocking against the table, cardboard letters falling out of her hand as she reeled, trying to make some kind of excuse.

"I-I'm done. You win, or whatever." And then she was stumbling away, out of the room, praying no one would follow her. She couldn't understand what was wrong with her. She felt like she was going through withdrawal all over again – sweating, shaking, filled with restless urges to do something destructive. The urge to run into the walls, break herself against them, just to keep herself _there_ instead of falling off the edge it felt like she was standing on.

It was like that day you realized you hadn't thought about getting a fix for hours, for days even, and you didn't understand how it had happened, how you could have forgotten something so huge, and even though you knew you should feel happy – this was sobriety, this was _progress_ – you couldn't help but feel confused and a little sad that it wasn't there anymore, after so long. You had lost something, and the losing hurt.

It was a strange kind of freedom, if you could call it that. And maybe Nicky was sick in the head, or she had that thing where hostages fell in love with their captors, but she didn't want to be free.

...

It took a long, numbingly cold shower to bring her back down. She had almost walked straight into the water with her khakis still on, but some small, rational part of her mind was functioning enough to tell her that was a bad idea. _Too many questions_.

She had survived more than two years in Litchfield without Lorna, and a lifetime before that. Why the hell was she falling apart now?

Things were finally approaching normal again. Eating with Piper and Alex every day. Going to work. Getting more books from the library. Movie night, laundry day, afternoon naps. She was cleaning up her messes, even if she hadn't tackled the biggest ones yet.

She should be happy.

She should be, if not _happy_, something other than this.

...

There were some things Nicky just couldn't leave alone, even if it would be better for everyone if she could stay uninvolved. Heroin had been one of those things. Lorna Morello, it seemed, was another.

Nicky knew she was the talk of the prison, but something that had been bothering her since that night she had lost her shit in the cafeteria was that she knew Lorna was too. And people weren't talking about her because of her increasingly impressive stint in SHU, but because they had finally seen something about Lorna that wasn't pretty lipstick and charming naiveté. No one had the guts to say these things to Nicky's face, maybe, but that didn't mean she was oblivious.

So she found herself marching through the cafeteria, plunking her tray down firmly across from Piper and Alex, and asked without preamble, "What are the other girls saying about Morello?"

Piper stared at her, a spoonful of runny eggs comically poised halfway to her mouth. She and Alex exchanged apprehensive glances, which told Nicky everything she needed to know. Still, she pressed on.

"The cafeteria thing – I threw my tray, taco meat everywhere, c'mon, Chapman, I know you remember this – well, that happened because I heard them saying some stuff about her. I wanna hear the rest of it."

Piper and Alex kept looking at each other, clearly running through a storm of communication with just their eyes. Piper, the apparent sacrificial lamb, finally said, softly, "There were a lot of people in that visiting room, Nicky."

"You don't have to break it to me gently, Chapman. Just tell me what they're saying."

"They know she's not engaged, that there never was a relationship. They know she tried to kill his wife. The rest they're kind of filling in for themselves – psychotic, delusional, schizo, stalker, crazy, two-faced, dangerous, you get the idea…"

Alex picked up where Piper had drifted off. "Crazy Eyes – _Suzanne_," she amended quickly after Piper elbowed her in the ribs, "and Pennsatucky were already fulfilling their roles as our patron saints of batshit, you know? And it seems like people have decided Lorna completes the triumvirate."

Nicky had her hand clenched around her fork the whole time, listening, wondering when the plastic in her grip was going to give. They weren't even that _wrong_, but that didn't mean Nicky had to like hearing people shove their own diagnoses on Lorna and treat her like a freak for something that wasn't entirely under her control.

"People are cruel about the things they don't understand. Just look at how we treat Suzanne – people are scared of mental illness, so they mock it, they put a box around it, lock it away so they don't have to touch it." Piper was sympathetic, but Nicky could only take so much sympathy before it became suffocating.

"It's not like she's gonna get the help she needs in here," Nicky said bitterly.

"I mean, yeah, she's not going to have the right medication or a therapist or anything like that, but that doesn't mean things can't get better for her in here."

Nicky was already rolling her eyes, but Piper held up a hand, stubbornly, as if to say that she wasn't finished yet. "Even if it's just keeping her busy with things – like when she was writing for the newsletter, that seemed good for her – so that it's harder for her to slip away to those…other places."

Nicky fought to keep her voice steady, neutral, but the anger shook through anyway. "That's a nice story, Piper, but you and I both know that's not how it works." It wasn't Piper she was angry at, but her brain didn't seem to be too concerned about differentiating between those kinds of things these days.

They sat in silence for a while, she and Piper just pushing the food around their trays while Alex looked between them as if she was measuring something.

"This is fucking depressing. Somebody say something!"

"The floor's yours, Vause. Take it away."

Alex thought for a minute, then a playful smile crept onto her face. "You know, when this one got out of SHU the first time, she dragged me into the chapel for our first post-reunion fuck session. She seemed pretty excited to see me Chicago, too."

"Yeah, and then she reported you to your parole officer and got you re-incarcerated. Am I supposed to be moved by her great acts of love or something?"

"I'm not saying we don't have issues. I'm saying SHU fucks with people's brains. It helped Piper reconnect with her gayer side, maybe the same thing will happen with Morello."

Piper mumbled, "Sitting _right_ here, Alex," at the same time as Nicky said, "That's fucked up, Vause."

And Nicky hated herself a little, how hopeful she sounded even when she pretended it was a joke, asking, "You think it'll work?"

Alex shrugged. "Anything's possible, right?"

"Yeah, but Piper was gay for you _before_ you both ended up in prison. I had to turn Lorna. And she's still in love with her imaginary boyfriend anyway."

"Details, details. You're here, you're real, you just gotta show her how good you'd be together."

"That's not what I meant. It's complicated."

"It's not complicated. You _like_ her," Alex sang in that tone kids use to tease each other about their crushes.

Nicky was not in the mood to be teased. "Please don't do that. We're not in high school anymore."

"Exactly. We're not in high school. So why can't you just say it?" Alex leaned forward, surprisingly serious, her voice dropping dangerously low, like she was getting ready for a fight.

Nicky didn't know how the conversation had gotten twisted into this, but she wanted out.

Her lack of a response really set Alex off. "What's the worst that could happen? A broken heart? Poor you. Welcome to the real world, _kid_." Alex's words were full of contempt and venom, her dark eyes narrowed at Nicky, who sat dumbfounded, unsure why Alex was unloading on her like there was some personal vendetta there. Piper looked equally taken aback.

"Alex," Piper tried hesitantly, but Alex was already pushing away from the table, not bothering to bus her tray, and for once it wasn't Nicky storming out of the room.

...

The look Alex had given her had said it all: _You're a coward_.

But Alex didn't know what had happened on the stairs after Christopher's surprise visit. Nicky _had _said it then – well, she had said 'I do' in a non-marriage way, in a way that had implied love without saying the actual word, and Lorna had been so wrecked in that moment that she had probably interpreted it as loving her as a friend or as part of Red's family, and…it was complicated.

Even though Lorna had admitted her relationship with Christopher wasn't real, those kinds of emotions and that level of self-delusion didn't go away overnight. Nicky hadn't been lying when she said Lorna was still in love with her imaginary boyfriend. And even if Lorna got over that, she had made it abundantly clear that she wasn't interested in Nicky _that way. _Sure, she had enjoyed the sex at first, but that was just a replacement for what she thought she was missing on the outside. Sure, she liked to spend time with Nicky, and she told Nicky more of her secrets than she told anyone else, and she came to Nicky for help and allowed herself to be comforted in Nicky's arms, but none of that translated to _love. _

Nicky thought about the stupid white bird from Piper's book. Was she the arrow or the bird? Because when it came down to it, when it came down to her and Lorna, the only two options seemed to be destroy or be destroyed. It was pretty to look at, love, but it hurt like fucking hell.

* * *

I know everyone's been missing Lorna in this story (including me), so I'm happy to say her return is right around the corner. There will be (more) angst, there will be fluff, there will be all sorts of things that I can't tell you about because I haven't written it yet. It's all happening.


	5. Returns

Note: You wanted Lorna, you got Lorna.

* * *

…_That's all I meant by 'relationship.' You want me to grab a dictionary?..._

Nicky walked into the library, planning on bugging Poussey for more recommendations. Poussey liked to tease her, slipping things like _How to Win Friends and Influence People _and collections of Sappho's poems into the stacks of more conventional books she had started setting aside for Nicky, but her choices – even the joke ones – were surprisingly thoughtful and had led to some interesting conversations between them. Nicky wondered if she had accidentally started a book club of two: Literature for Girls Who Fall in Love with Their Straight Friends.

So she thought it was weird when Poussey immediately frowned upon seeing her and asked, "What're you doing here?" in a disapproving tone.

"Books, Poussey. Rumor has it this is the place to get 'em," Nicky snarked back.

"Well, yeah, I just thought you'd be kickin' it with your girl. Jane Austen can wait, aight?" Poussey turned away to cram some more books onto the shelf behind her. "Man, you two are anticlimactic as shit."

"Kicking it with my girl?" Nicky snorted in disbelief. "One, she's not my girl. Two, do I really need to remind you that she's in SHU? It's been, like, three weeks. News does not travel that slow around here."

"Ain't you heard? Morello is _out_, man. Everyone saw her gettin' marched back down to the transfer block maybe an hour ago."

"Morello is out? Like, wind-in-her-hair, walking through the Suburbs if she feels like it _out_?" Her hands had found their way deep into her hair again, pulling through the tangles, and for a wild second she was tempted to ask Poussey if she looked okay, the way Lorna always did when someone came visiting. "Fuck! Why didn't anyone tell me?"

Poussey was grinning at her now, that smile full of warmth and understanding and a not-small amount of amusement. She had to push Nicky towards the door until Nicky started walking on her own, urging her on with happy laughter that followed Nicky down the hallway.

"Go on! What're you waiting for? You go and see about that girl!"

Nicky didn't run – probably couldn't run if she tried, the way she suddenly felt so uncoordinated, and her heart was racing enough as it was. Inmates moved past her in a blur, and she slowed down even more, like she was convinced that she wouldn't recognize Morello anymore if she happened to be in that hallway, so she had to study everyone's faces looking for the right one. Most of the women just looked back at her knowingly when they caught her stares.

She hit the Suburbs first, in case Lorna had already snuck up there to look for her. The thought sent another wave of nerves through her. The Suburbs were mostly deserted, and a quick glance around told her that Lorna wasn't there. It wasn't like she had expected Lorna to be waiting for her – the girl had just gotten out of SHU, she had bigger things to deal with – but she couldn't control the burn of disappointment that rose in the back of her throat, or the lingering fear that Lorna had come back changed, slipping away from Nicky just when they finally had the chance to get somewhere.

Nicky stopped by her bunk, neatly destroying her properly-made bed as she dug around under the mattress with less and less patience, her hands reaching blindly for something she had set aside for Morello a while ago. A sort-of 'welcome back from hell' gift, if you wanted to put it that way. She finally found it tucked against the side of the metal frame and pocketed it.

On her way out, she paused to look around again and was relieved to see that neither Chapman nor Boo were there to comment. Nicky was sure that they would have plenty to say soon enough. She did make awkward eye contact with Alex, who was sitting on her own bed with a battered magazine, glasses perched on her head and eyes full of sharp curiosity. Alex looked like she wanted to say something, but then gave a small shake of her head and flipped her glasses down to hang off her nose – shields back up, Nicky guessed, and she didn't waste any more time.

The room that had been dominated by Miss Rosa and DeMarco for so many years now housed DeMarco and a constant rotation of newbies, transfers, and other inmates who were waiting on bunk reassignments for whatever reason – and, presumably, Morello, though there was no sign of her when Nicky ever-so-casually stuck her head in.

"Hey, DeMarco, is Morello staying in here with you?"

"Sure is. Where else they gonna put her?"

"Any idea where she, uh, went?" Nicky really did not want to have to comb the entire prison for Lorna.

DeMarco smirked at her. Clearly Nicky's attempt to play it cool had failed. "Said something about getting some fresh air."

Nicky nodded and spun for the door, trying to think where in the yard Lorna would go.

She heard DeMarco call after her, "Hey, Nichols, tell her the whole 'pale face' look isn't really working for her. She should fix that," and barely registered herself sassing back, "Thanks, Darth, I'll make sure she gets on it. Highest priority."

Lorna had never spent too much time outside, chirping about how the sun gave her wrinkles and how the barbed wire kind of ruined the effect anyway, so Nicky had no clue where to start looking. She pushed through the nearest exit door and stopped short at the sight of a familiar profile just down the path in front of her. Apparently Morello wasn't in a wandering mood.

Morello sat half-sitting, half-leaning against the low brick wall that bordered the sidewalk, her head tilted back to catch the light and her eyes closed. It reminded Nicky of when Watson had gotten out the first time, raising her arms to the sky in what Alex had described as a 'moment.' Morello's gesture was less dramatic and less _Titanic_-lite, but it was strange to see her sitting so quietly. And alone.

Nicky shambled forward, hands deep in her pockets, knocking her leg gently against Lorna's when she got close to get Lorna to open her eyes.

"Hey, kid."

"Hey, Nicky." Her voice was soft, and her lips quirked just a little at the corners into a tiny smile.

Morello's face was completely bare of makeup, her hair straighter than Nicky had ever seen it, and Nicky felt uncomfortable standing there with her stupid little smile that matched Lorna's as she tried to take in all the new details, looking for pieces of a Lorna she recognized, but it seemed her brain could only process the differences. Too pale, too young, too tired.

She sat on the wall next to Morello to even out their heights. "Twenty-three days in SHU. Today's twenty-four, but I guess it doesn't count, right? Might be some kind of record for a first-timer."

Morello shrugged. "Guess I lost count."

Nicky had balled her hands in her lap, aching to touch Lorna – touching had always been so natural between them – like she wanted to make sure Lorna was real, and here, but there was a new distance between them that Nicky wasn't sure how to bridge. If Lorna even wanted to be reached.

"You wanna talk about it?"

"What is there to talk about?"

It wasn't the answer Nicky wanted, but it was one she understood. People didn't talk about what happened to them in SHU. Nicky didn't. Even Chapman never really brought up her time there, and she was always looking for an audience to air her grievances to.

They sat on the wall, Nicky fidgeting all over with nervous energy while Lorna stayed still, her gaze trained somewhere far away past the end of the barbed wire, so far away that Nicky thought she couldn't touch her even if she worked up the courage. Their legs kept brushing together because of Nicky's fidgeting, but if Lorna felt it she didn't give any sign.

Nicky's hand closed over the gift hidden in her pocket, and she felt stupid all over again. Suddenly she was pushing it at Lorna without looking at her, her mouth off and running to break the awful silence.

"I saved your lipstick. They would have taken it when they cleaned out your cube, so I snuck in and grabbed it before them – that's a terrible hiding place, by the way. So, whenever you want to wear it again. Or not. It's not like you have to."

While she was babbling, she felt Lorna hesitantly take the lipstick from her, staring at it, then staring at Nicky, her eyes wider, softer, almost shining the way they did in the comics Daya was always drawing. This looked more like the Lorna who believed in love, white dresses, and _West Side Story_. This was someone Nicky knew.

"Thank you. You didn't have to do that, Nicky." Lorna's smile was firmer this time, her accent less pronounced because she spoke so seriously and softly.

"Yeah, well, I know how much it means to you. Fucked up priorities you got there, but, hey, everyone's got something."

Lorna kept turning the lipstick tube over and over in her hands.

"I missed you," she finally said.

"I missed you too, kid."

Nicky wasn't sure who reached for who first, but Lorna was suddenly squashed against her chest, and Nicky was reminded how perfectly they fit together: Lorna's head settling just so against her shoulder, her arms engulfing Lorna, her hands pressing against the small bones of Lorna's back, and both of them were holding so tight, fists full of hair and khaki and the skin underneath, and all of this, this never-letting-go, they'd done a hundred times before, but it still seemed new and different and like a promise.

...

Morello went back to wearing her lipstick and curling her hair, and so to most people, it looked like nothing had changed. Morello still looked like Morello. Morello still talked like Morello.

Nicky knew better.

Morello sat with them, Red's not-quite-family, at mealtimes and said all of the things that were expected of her – mildly racist comment here, misconception about what 'looking a gift horse in the mouth' meant there, _Twilight_ references, laughing at everyone else's jokes – but it never seemed honest. Most of the time she was somewhere else entirely. Nicky didn't know if Lorna was lost in her head or reliving something that happened in SHU, but she worried all the time now.

She especially worried as she watched Morello eat. Nicky knew the food in SHU was a horror, and it could put a damper on anyone's appetite. The problem wasn't that Lorna had stopped eating, it was that she had stopped eating like _Lorna_. She cut things up with her plastic knife. She took appropriately-sized bites. Sometimes she didn't finish everything on her tray. In other words, she ate like an actual human being, and that scared Nicky.

It was another indicator in a thousand that something in Lorna had been extinguished. Her old enthusiasm for anything and everything, the way she used to light up like a kid over the stupidest little things, just wasn't there anymore.

Piper pulled Nicky aside one day to tell her that she had noticed changes in Lorna too and that she understood why Nicky was worried, but maybe Nicky was jumping to the worst conclusions too quickly.

"She needs some time to readjust."

"I know. I know."

It didn't help that the other inmates were less-than-subtle with their knowledge about Lorna's past. Whispers and stares dogged her around the prison, and some of the women were even more openly cruel, asking Morello when the wedding was and which face she'd be wearing on the happy day.

Morello pretended that she didn't hear any of it, but Nicky could tell she was hurt and confused by this new kind of attention. It read in the way she hunched smaller over the cafeteria tables, the way she walked ramrod-straight down the hallways with her eyes fixed on some point over everyone's heads, the way she stopped making eye contact and never wanted to go anywhere alone.

Lorna had been moved back into the Suburbs, but she still hadn't received her job reassignment, so she spent an absurd amount of time in her cube. Nicky tried to coax her out sometimes – to watch TV in the rec room, to go with her to the library and talk to Poussey, to at least go as far as Piper's cube and say hi – but she could tell these attempts were quickly frustrating both of them.

Several times she stopped by Lorna's bunk only to find her curled on her side, pretending to be asleep. That sent a pretty clear message. But Nicky kept coming back, one time bringing her radio and headphones and leaving them on the bed. If Lorna wanted to shut everything out, she might as well use Nicky's music to do it.

She had poked Morello in the back awkwardly as she left the radio, saying, "Don't let them get to you, kid."

She might as well talk to the wall. Morello had kept up her act, the slight hitch in her breathing the one sign that she had heard Nicky.

Nicky Nichols wasn't the hovering type, or the hand-holding type, though she would be both if Lorna would only let her. It was hard to stay away from Lorna, to give her space that Nicky wasn't sure she actually needed, after waiting so long to get her back. Sometimes it was like Lorna had never left SHU at all. She felt farther away, even if Nicky could touch her, and Nicky was left just as lonely.

...

Piper was doing her best to be supportive, but there was only one person who Nicky wanted to talk to.

It had been easier when Red was in charge of the kitchen – Nicky always knew where to find her and could read Red's mood by how the kitchen was running that day. Now Nicky had to play detective to even find Red, and she had no idea how to approach the situation without getting her ass handed to her.

So she decided to just suck it up and go in with both barrels blazing, like she had never turned her back on Red and everything the family had done for her. She really had no other cards to play besides brash, loud, and sarcastic. Russians might not play baseball, but Nicky had done pretty much everything on Red's shit list besides use again – she had sold Red out to fucking _Pornstache_ – and she was still alive. That had to count for something.

The greenhouse seemed like her best bet to catch Red alone. So she found a window that looked out that way and stationed herself there in the morning, watching for that unmistakable burning hair to enter the greenhouse before she went down herself. She hesitated with one hand on the door handle, wondering how to even begin to apologize and ask for Red's help one more time. She decided to handle it like she handled most everything else in her life: by winging it.

When the door clicked shut behind her and Red whirled around brandishing a trowel at her, Nicky remembered that this was the place where Vee had tried to kill Red. Maybe not the best meeting place, but it was too late to turn around now.

With Red staring at her in surprise, words came rattling out of Nicky in a barrage.

"There's still a massive amount of Vee's heroin in the prison. Boo and I stole it, but then we lost it, and it's driving me fucking nuts not knowing where it is. The kitchen's already served meatloaf twice this week, and the second time it was grey. Lorna got out of SHU, and I think she came back broken. And I'm in love with her."

Red finally lowered the trowel. "Talk about burying the lead," she muttered, peeling off her work gloves and dropping them onto the table with her other tools. "If Mendoza thinks she can repeat meals that close without a riot on her hands, she's – how do they say? – _loca_. I know. I've seen it happen."

"Seriously? I tell you _everything_, and that's all you have to say?"

Red shrugged, unimpressed.

Nicky took a huge breath. "Look, I fucked up. You don't have to tell me. It's just…everything with Vee, and you, and then Lorna getting sent to SHU, I couldn't handle it, all right? Everything was falling apart, and I just needed to get away, or something. I don't know what I needed."

"Diplomatic isolationism. The Russians would love you."

"C'mon, Red, can you talk to me like a person?"

"You turned your back on family. You _never_ turn your back on family. I don't have anything else to say to you."

Nicky couldn't accept that Red was going to abandon her over something she had said and done in a moment of anger. Not after everything they had been through. "What about you? Look me in the eye and tell me that trying to sabotage Mendoza's kitchen without telling anyone wasn't turning your back on us. I mean, Jesus! I know it was an accident, but you almost killed Gina! And then you pushed the rest of us away and joined the old folks' brigade, but we came back when you called us, didn't we? Tell me how this is about family. And tell me why it's different for me."

Red sighed, and it was the sound of disappointment and fierce, fierce love. "Oh, Nicky. Why do I always feel like you're learning the wrong lessons from me?"

"What can I say, Ma? You don't have the best people skills."

Red sat heavily on a rickety-looking workbench, patting the wood beside her for Nicky to join her. "I knew I wasn't raising a family of geniuses here, but I expected better from you. You're supposed to be my smart girl."

"Smart girls don't fall in love with their best friends."

"The smartest girls do."

Nicky's mouth twisted at that. Red had a point, but Nicky figured that best friends with undecided sexual orientations and mental health issues were kind of in their own category.

"What were you going to do with the drugs?"

"I don't know." Red was looking at her hard, but Nicky couldn't give her an answer. "I really don't know."

"Whatever there was, it's gone now. No, listen to me," Red stopped Nicky from interrupting by grabbing her hand. "It's been weeks. It's _gone. _It doesn't matter if the meth heads found it, it doesn't matter if it was sold or used or flushed down the toilet. There's nothing more to think about."

Something about how Red said that last part made Nicky examine Red's face a little more closely. "Did you know?"

"Nicky." Red's voice was stern. That part of their conversation was over.

Nicky threw her hands up in the air. "Fine. Tell me what to do about Lorna. She's not herself."

"Give her time. She'll come around."

"You and Piper are rubbing off on each other."

"Maybe we're just the only sane ones left in here."

Nicky grinned. "Yeah, I think I'm going to stick with my theory."

"You can't 'fix' people, Nicky," Red warned her. "And you can't save them from a lot of things either."

"I know. I just wanna do _something_."

"You really love Lorna?" She waited for Nicky to nod. "Then you already know what to do."

Nicky was ready to protest. That was the whole _point_ – she didn't know what to do. Red saw her uncertainty and took her by the shoulders, shaking her slightly with each sentence as if she could shake all of her sense into Nicky through bruising contact.

"Be there for her. Take care of her if you can. And let her take care of you."

Nicky almost laughed at how clichéd it all sounded. "Wow, you get that advice off a fortune cookie? That's deep, Red. So deep."

"Mock if you must, little girl. I've seen a lot of girls come and go here, and their loves don't always end pretty."

Wasn't that the truth.

"I didn't mean to walk away from you, Red."

"I know you didn't, Nicky. I know you didn't." She reached up and tucked Nicky's hair back behind her ears. "You'll be the death of me yet, you and that smart mouth of yours."

...

The next day at lunch Yoga Jones was telling them how Watson had unexpectedly shown up at her yoga class as a sort-of apology for her recent behavior. They had talked about SHU.

"…deplorable conditions," Jones was saying. "The things she saw and heard in there she'll never forget. Absolutely inhumane."

Nicky wasn't sure this was the safest topic. She and Chapman – _Chapman_, of all people – might be SHU veterans at this point, but Lorna was still recovering from the experience, and Nicky was afraid one wrong word would trigger her somehow, unleashing everything Lorna had been holding back since her return. Things could get ugly.

So she was shocked when it was Lorna herself who offered up a response to Jones's story. "It got weird in there for me too."

"Like, pretending the ceiling tiles have distinct personalities and setting up a dinner party with them weird, or Big Boo getting eaten out by Little Boo weird?" Nicky couldn't stop herself from asking.

The look on Piper's face was priceless, and Alex had to pound her on the back until she spat out a half-chewed piece of chicken into her napkin. Piper glared at her across the table, hissing, "Was that really necessary? Some of us are still eating!"

Nicky shrugged. "SHU by definition is one weird-ass place. I'm just trying to find out what level of whacked-out shit we're talking about here."

"Closer to the ceiling tile thing." Lorna was staring down at her plate, drawing circles in her gravy with a spoon.

Piper squinted at Nicky, like she was focused on remembering something complicated. "Didn't you eat a rat the last time you were in?"

"Whoa, trying to throw me under the bus, eh, Chapman? I very clearly told you that my _neighbor _ate a rat." Cue disgusted faces all around. "I just tried to befriend the guards by throwing origami animals at them every time they opened the food slat. You ever try to make a frog out of toilet paper? Shit's tough."

"I used egg yolks to paint a yellow warbler on my wall. I called it 'Thirsty Bird,'" Piper threw in cheerfully.

Nicky nodded her approval. "A fellow SHU _artiste_. I like that."

Alex's gaze kept bouncing between them, her expression wavering between amused and disturbed. "You know, I'm starting to think SHU is some sort of sanity vortex where the crazy ones come out saner and the sane ones come out crazier." Piper gave Alex a dirty look, and Alex rushed to defend herself. "No, just look at Pennsatucky. She's almost normal now. And kinda gay?"

That last part seemed to be directed at Nicky. She and Alex still hadn't talked since their fight or whatever had happened between them, and right now Nicky wasn't really interested in whatever point Alex was trying to make.

She heard Alex say, "Okay, _normal _might be overstating my case, but…" somewhere in the background, but Nicky was only watching Lorna – Lorna, who had fallen out of the conversation to draw in her food, dark eyes fixed on the well she kept carving in her gravy like it was some kind of black hole she could disappear into.

...

She managed to convince Lorna to come to the rec room with her, and now they were listlessly pushing around pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that they had no intention of solving.

"The box says 500 pieces. There are _not_ 500 pieces. I don't even see any blue, and a third of this is supposed to be sky."

Lorna was putting even less effort in than Nicky, and it wasn't hard to see why. Another pair of girls walked by, flicking each other smug smiles as they giggled, "A few jigsaws short of a puzzle, huh, Nichols? Kind of like your friend there."

"Yeah, fuck off," Nicky said tiredly, flipping them off with both hands. "That doesn't even make sense."

Apparently people had nothing better to do with their time than drop their snide insults about Lorna and watch them from across the room, trading whispers behind their hands like girls at summer camp.

Lorna gave up the puzzle entirely, crossing her arms over her chest, her face taking on a look that Nicky had long ago learned to associate with an impending explosion. Usually Lorna's explosions were more comical than anything – it was hard not to laugh when she lost her head over Piper being chosen for WAC or whether 'knifes' was a real word – but they could also mean trouble, and more trouble was the last thing Nicky wanted right now.

"Why do you even bother?" Lorna asked her bitterly. She couldn't even look Nicky in the face when she said it.

"People go around saying bullshit, I'm gonna call 'em on it."

"It's not like it's not true."

"What? C'mon, you don't have actual holes in your brain, do you?"

Nicky was trying to play everything off as lightly as she could, with the sense that she was just digging herself in even deeper. Maybe she would have been ready to tackle a serious conversation like this days ago, when Lorna first got out of SHU, but she wasn't ready for it now.

"I don't want you defending me, Nicky."

"Why? So you can just sit there and _not_?"

"I'm not your _project_, Nicky. I'm not something you can hold up to Red and get a pat on the back for." Lorna turned on her now, hands digging into the edge of the table like she wanted to break it. Her eyes were narrowed, every line of her body sharp with accusation, and Nicky wondered if this was what people like Christopher saw when they looked at Lorna. And Lorna didn't stop.

"Is there a reason everyone keeps asking me about our 'relationship?' I'm not _your girl_, either, so you can stop telling everyone that I am." There was hurt mixed in with the anger this time. Like she thought Nicky had used her.

"Aww, shit, Lorna." She was pulling at her hair again, the way she always did when she didn't know what she was supposed to do. "I didn't tell anyone anything. You know how people talk in here."

Lorna sat stone-faced, and Nicky wasn't sure she was even listening.

"We're friends, okay? It's better that way, you said so yourself."

But Lorna was shaking her head now, suddenly backing away like she couldn't wait to get Nicky out of her sight. "Just leave me alone, Nichols. I'm done with this."

Lorna left, and Nicky didn't follow her. She kept moving the puzzle pieces around in front of her, blindly joining edges in impossible formations, and she knew she would never find a way to make them all fit.

* * *

I've been trying to feel out an end-point, and it looks like there will be one more long chapter to wrap up the main action, plus a coda/epilogue for a little more closure and just because they're fun. It still has the potential to grow, but I think some of the ideas floating around in my brain belong in stories of their own and not necessarily this one. Thanks for your continued support! More angst to come, but I think there's a decent amount of fluff and happy things on its way as well.


	6. Risings

You guys, this might be the sappiest thing I've ever written. I can't even stand it.

* * *

_At least nobody got hurt.  
-Except you.  
Nah, I didn't get hurt that bad._

What was one more failed relationship in the grand scheme of things?

She and Lorna had both had some fun, done their damage, and now it was over – simple as. And if Nicky tried to pretend that this failure didn't hurt more than the others (because this time she hadn't been the one to leave first, because this time it was Lorna), there was no one there to tell her otherwise.

Usually it was easier to sweep her messes under the rug, to erase all traces of those other people from her life, but when you lived in a rigidly confined space like Litchfield, every place had once been 'their place,' every surface bore Lorna's touch, and she couldn't even walk down the stairs without thinking of Lorna in her arms.

Nicky was well aware that that level of obsessive thinking was probably only common in serial killers and teenage girls who had fallen in love for the first time – she had just spent the past month sleeping with Morello's lipstick under her mattress, after all, and if that didn't scream 'I like to collect trophies from my victims,' she didn't know what did. She also didn't know which category she wanted to belong in less.

Nicky didn't know why she kept finding herself in the chapel. Of all the places that reminded her of Lorna, that was probably the worst. But it had been _her _place first, and maybe this was her attempt to reclaim all those things that had belonged to her before, while she let the pervasiveness of Lorna work itself out of her body like a splinter.

Half the time she wandered into the chapel, there was some kind of service going on or at least one pair of women going at it like rabbits behind the altar. The latter was the case now, and Nicky muttered "I'll see myself out" as she went in search of somewhere a little more quiet.

She ended up outside, sitting with her back against the biggest tree she could find and thumping her boots against the ground in time with the bass line in her head. Lorna had never returned her radio, and Nicky sure as hell wasn't going to ask for it back. Instead, she had started carrying a book with her, more as something to occupy her hands than as actual reading material, and it lay open on her lap now as Nicky tried to match up the words with the bass line in a way that proved surprisingly entertaining.

She only stopped when someone kicked at her foot, and she looked up, scowling, into the face of Lorna Morello – literally the last person she expected to see standing in front of her.

"Uh, hey," Nicky said, wondering exactly how stupid she had looked bopping around to her imaginary music.

Lorna slowly knelt next to her, a funny expression on her face somewhere between determination and looking like she might get sick all over Nicky's shoes. And just before Nicky decided whether she wanted to ask Lorna if she was okay or bolt back to her cube, Lorna was kissing her forcefully on the lips, one hand coming up to knot in Nicky's hair and pull her closer, and Nicky could count the number of times they'd kissed, now, on three fingers – the other times silly and platonic and nowhere near the lips.

When Lorna pulled away, settling back on her heels, it was all Nicky could do to breathe, "Fuck me, Vause was right."

Lorna scrunched up her forehead at that, confused, and wouldn't quite meet Nicky's eyes, a sudden flush in her cheeks as she mumbled, "I wanted to see what that was like."

"Okay."

They sat, and Nicky waited for Lorna to say something more, _anything_, but Lorna looked more and more like she was the one getting ready to bolt. Her fingers twisted anxiously in the grass, and her eyes kept shifting from her knees to Nicky back to her knees, and Nicky's stomach dropped at the look of shock and possibly even regret she saw in Lorna's face.

"What do you _want_ from me?" Nicky finally sighed, all the frustration making her voice crack in the middle, and she was mortified to see how Lorna's expression changed when she heard the break, like she suddenly realized that Nicky was capable of being hurt.

Lorna shook her head. "I don't know. I really don't." Her hand twitched in the grass towards Nicky like she wanted to touch her, but she didn't move. "I _like_ bein' with you, Nicky…and you make me…"

Lorna's voice was barely audible, her attention fixed firmly on the ground between them as she finished, "I don't think I'm good for you."

Nicky laughed gently. Of all the things that could have come out of Lorna's mouth, all the reasons she could have given for staying away from Nicky, that was not the one she had expected to hear.

"That's supposed to be my line, kid."

How many times had other girls' parents tried to call her mother because they thought Nicky was a 'bad influence' for their daughters? How many times had she been asked to leave, ordered out of houses and classrooms and lives because she was a little too destructive? And it was something she had learned to take pride in, being the incurable 'bad girl,' because having any kind of influence over others, even if it was negative, had its own thrill.

But Lorna was shaking her head again, almost shrinking away from Nicky like she thought she was a bomb that might go off any minute and hurt Nicky even more. It was the day on the staircase all over again, with Lorna convincing herself that she wasn't worthy of love, and Nicky wanted to shake her and ask, _do you _still_ not understand?_

"Is this about something that happened in SHU?" she prodded softly instead.

For a long while, she wasn't sure if Lorna would answer. But then the words came, hesitant and quiet, so that Nicky had to lean in to hear them.

"I thought I was dyin' in there, Nicky. When they first put me in, I couldn't breathe. It felt like I was having a heart attack or something. And I didn't die – obviously – " and Nicky saw a flash of Lorna's old humor, a little bit darker, but there, before she was stuttering over her words again, "but then other, other _things_ happened…and I thought about askin' them to take me to Psych instead, but there's not really anyone to ask, you know?"

Jesus. Nobody ever _asked_ to go to Psych. If Nicky had been worried about what Morello had gone through before, her fears had just increased tenfold. But it was clear that Lorna didn't want to go into detail about the experience, and though Nicky was determined to hear the rest of the story someday, she wasn't about to push Lorna right now.

"I had that too. Not the, uh, Psych stuff, but the panic-heart-attack thing…I had that too." Now Nicky was the one lowering her head shyly, her hands twisting together in her lap. "About you."

Lorna was looking at her like she couldn't possibly believe that, her eyes large and curious.

"Seriously? Did no one tell you that I basically lost my mind while you were gone?"

"Nobody's really talked to me since I got out. Except you."

"Well, there was a…thing in the cafeteria that got me a shot. There was some heroin involved. And I, uh, totally blew it with Red, but that's all okay now."

Nicky was quietly dying of embarrassment as she talked, and it didn't help that Lorna's eyes grew wider and wider and she made a little squeak when Nicky mentioned heroin.

"Oh God, can you just ask Chapman or Red to explain it to you?"

Lorna nodded, biting her lower lip, and they were back to not-quite-uncomfortable silence. Lorna tentatively rested her hand on Nicky's knee, and Nicky was struck with sudden amusement and wonder over how they had gone from no-holds-barred fucking to being spooked by one kiss and not knowing what to do with their hands. A backwards relationship, if there ever was one.

"I think…I need some time," Lorna said quietly.

"No shortage of that in here."

For a second, Nicky thought Lorna was going to kiss her again, but Lorna just squeezed her knee lightly and walked away. Nicky gave her a head start before gathering up her book, patting the grass around her for her headphones before she remembered that she didn't have them. As she approached the nearest entrance back into the prison, the door burst open and Boo sauntered out, smirking widely at Nicky as if all of her suspicions had been confirmed.

"Trying out a new shade, Nichols?" she asked as she wiped a smear of red from the corner of Nicky's mouth and held up her fingers for Nicky to inspect.

Nicky couldn't hide her grin as she pushed past Boo and headed for her bunk. One kiss and one conversation didn't promise anything, but Lorna had kissed _her _and hadn't bothered to clean up the evidence, and Nicky would never dare to be the one to wipe her lips after a statement like that.

...

She came back from work the next day to find Alex waiting for her. Alex looked even more like a giant than usual, the way she awkwardly perched on the very edge of Nicky's bed and towered over the many haphazard piles of books on the floor.

"Are you actually reading these or just practicing your topographic map skills?"

"It's my system, okay?" Nicky pointed at each stack of books as she described them. "Piper's, Poussey's, shit I pretend I've read, shit I've actually read, and those ones are the perfect height for balancing out the rickety table in the rec room. You know the one."

"So, I guess I came by to say sorry for yelling at you in the cafeteria the other day. Or whatever."

Alex looked for all the world like a kid who was being forced by her mother – or in this case, probably her girlfriend – to apologize for something she didn't particularly feel sorry for.

"Are you always this sincere when you apologize, Vause?"

Alex smiled a little at that. "Sorry."

"Go on. I just spent days wondering how I'd wronged you in a past life. Can't wait to hear this."

Alex's eyebrows climbed another inch on her forehead. "Days, really?"

"More like ten minutes, then. But it was a long ten minutes!"

"You remind me of me, sometimes."

"So when you were getting all snippy with me, you were really getting snippy with yourself."

Alex shrugged as if to say, _something like that_. "I liked this place a lot better when we didn't sit around psychoanalyzing each other."

Nicky waved a hand at her. "Sorry. Continue."

"I just don't want you to make the same mistakes that I did with Piper."

"Can you vague that up for me a little more?"

Alex leaned back a little on Nicky's bed. "Being honest about your feelings, I guess. Telling people the truth. And not getting involved in an international drug cartel." Alex shook her head with a wry smile. "Really kills the relationships, that one."

"I'll try to keep that in mind, Alex," Nicky said, laughing.

"You told Lorna you're in love with her yet?"

"We're, uh, still working up to it." Nicky went to go join Alex on the bed.

"The big three words are scary – believe me, I get that. You'll hate yourself when you say it, 'cause you can't hide behind your snark-and-sex armor anymore, and suddenly that girl can break you so easily," and here Alex turned to look Nicky directly in the eye, "but you'll hate yourself even more if you don't say it."

Alex tapped her on the shoulder a few times before she got up to leave. "Don't fuck it up, Nichols."

"Desperately trying not to, Vause."

...

Lorna came to her while Nicky was flipping through an issue of _National Geographic_, skipping over all the articles because, who was she kidding, picture books had always been her favorite.

"Never pegged ya as the reading type."

"Remember I told you I went insane?" Nicky gestured to the stacks of books all around her. "Part of the insanity."

Lorna lingered in the doorway, shuffling her feet a little, until Nicky rolled her eyes and said, "You're not a vampire, Lorna. You can come in without an invitation."

So Lorna came in and fidgeted her way over to the bed, settling down next to Nicky with a soft thump.

"I talked to Chapman. Red was there too."

Nicky was relieved that Piper hadn't been Lorna's only source of information. The idea of Piper and Lorna sitting together on Piper's bed to discuss Nicky without supervision made her mouth twist cynically. Nothing good could come of that.

"And?"

"You went to yoga." Lorna's voice was hushed, full of wonder, and this was exactly what Nicky had been afraid of.

"You went to _yoga_, Nicky," Lorna said again, this time girlish and excited, her eyes glittering with laughter as she watched Nicky squirm.

"Stop saying it," Nicky whined, throwing her pillow at Lorna's head.

Lorna caught the pillow and hugged it to herself.

"You always make fun of me and the other girls who go. 'Hey, kid, how come you never chaturanga'd for me when we were together? Show me that downward dog again.'" Lorna tried to imitate Nicky's raspy teasing, facial expressions and all, and it was probably the most adorable thing Nicky had ever seen.

"Yeah, well, I owed it to Chapman after treating her like such a dick."

She didn't want to ask what else Piper had told her, because she was pretty sure that Piper had spilled everything, and not all of it was as funny as yoga.

"All that stuff with the heroin, Nicky…" Lorna sounded sad, mournful even, and when she got that hangdog look on her face, her hands bunching the pillow even tighter against her chest, Nicky was reminded that Lorna was just one more person she had disappointed.

"I don't know that I would've used it," she mumbled, looking away.

"I'm sorry I got you so upset."

Then it clicked for Nicky that maybe this was less about Lorna being disappointed in her and more about Lorna blaming herself. Lorna had spent so long not taking responsibility for her own problems that now it seemed like she was trying to make up for it by taking responsibility for everyone else's too.

"It wasn't _you_ that upset me. It's just this fucking place."

Her words didn't seem to reassure Lorna, who kept picking at loose threads along the pillow's seam. "I think maybe I should tell you what happened in SHU. It's only fair."

"Only if you want to, kid. You don't owe me anything."

"Yeah, I do."

Nicky inched a little closer to Lorna, not quite touching her, but close enough to remind Lorna that she was there.

"Christopher was there."

Lorna must have felt Nicky flinch at the name, because she hurried on. "I mean, I know he wasn't _there_ there, in the flesh, but I could always hear him. At night, especially. He was so _angry_. Sayin' things…like I ruined his life, and I'm a terrible person, and I should be put down…like a dog. And if no one else was gonna do it, if _I_ wasn't gonna do it, he'd have to come back and take care of the problem.

"But it wasn't so bad when I was awake. I could sorta block him out, and I didn't have to see him at least. So I stopped sleeping. You think it'd be hard, stayin' awake all the time, right? But it's real easy when the other option is havin' him yell at you, and it's like his mouth was right up to my ear, you know? I could feel it."

Nicky was getting the sanitized version of the story, she was sure, though everything she heard was like a blow, straight to the chest. Lorna's rabbit hole went deeper than this, and Nicky knew she might never see the bottom. She still didn't know much about Lorna's past or her family, but she was willing to bet that this was the most Lorna had ever shared about her problems – which made her proud and troubled at the same time.

She wasn't about to interrupt.

"It wasn't always him," Lorna continued, sounding so matter-of-fact the whole time.

"Sometimes it was my dad, or me, or…you," and she quickly flicked her gaze over to Nicky to gauge her reaction, "in the dreams. Do you still wanna hear more?"

"You had dreams about me?" Lorna nodded. "Were they hot?"

"Well, there was one…"

Nicky threw her head back and crowed, "Oh my God, you had a sex dream about me!"

Lorna blushed down to her roots.

Nicky got serious again. "And the other times? Did I say stuff like Christopher?"

"No, not like Christopher. But you were mad at me too, sometimes."

"I'm sorry."

Lorna shook her head, smiling a little crookedly. "Nah, I know it wasn't you. Just my messed-up brain, right?"

"Is it as bad out here?"

"The world's louder on the outside. There are so many people – _real_ people," and there was that dark humor from Lorna again, that flash of self-deprecation, "moving around and things to do that I don't have to hear the others so much."

"Hey, that's good."

Maybe Chapman was right. Keeping Lorna busy might be the best thing they could do for her.

"The things that I do sometimes…I _know _they're crazy and that I shouldn't do them, but I can't stop. It's like something's switched off in me, and I can't find the right controls again until it's too late." Lorna sighed, and there were notes of resignation and relief in it. "Now everybody knows what I am, and that's good. Means I can't hurt 'em if they keep their distance."

Nicky couldn't listen to any more. "Stop talking about yourself like you come with a warning label. If you come with one, then I sure as hell do, and I think that goes for most people."

"Nicky, it's real nice of you to say, but you don't understand – "

"All of us in here, we have something inside us that we're scared of." She paused, hoping that would sink in before she added, with a half-hearted smirk, "Even Piper Chapman."

She didn't know how to convince Lorna that it was true, but she knew it was.

"You're not that different, Lorna."

And this was the moment Nicky felt herself slide towards the inevitable, realizing she was about to go all-in. She knew why it was easier to say those words to Red, who had seen Nicky at her lowest, at her most broken, or to Alex, who got it, but it was Lorna she had to tell now.

Nicky had a rabbit hole of her own, all the dark and twisty parts of her that Lorna hadn't seen yet. There was so much left for them to learn about each other, and that was the thought that left Nicky stumbling over her words, as they all tried to come out at once.

"Lorna…look, I kinda already told you this on the staircase – when Christopher came, and we talked? – but I don't know if you understood what I meant."

She took a deep breath because looking into Lorna's eyes seemed to wind her, and (Vause was wrong) she didn't hate herself at all when she said "I love you," because how could she ever hate saying something so essential to Lorna?

"I know."

Nicky doubted Lorna realized she had just pulled the Han Solo card – which made Nicky Leia, and wasn't _that_ an unexpected reversal of their roles? Her answer wasn't about bravado or playing it cool, it was just the gentle acceptance of Nicky's feelings even if she couldn't say the same.

"I knew what you meant. More than friends."

"More than anything."

It didn't matter that Lorna couldn't say it back. Nicky had known that from the beginning, but she had had to say the words for herself, finding the power in speaking them aloud because it finally made it all real.

Lorna looked like she was struggling with herself. "Being with another woman…that's never who I thought I was. Am? And I don't know if I like other women, or if it's just…you…that I like."

Lorna made a face, shy and pained and a little exasperated. "I like you, Nicky, but I don't understand what you get out of it."

Nicky snorted, and kind of wanted to take a page out of Red's book and swat Lorna on the back of the head for being a complete idiot.

"Are you kidding? First, you're fucking hot. And you make me laugh, even when you don't mean to. You put up with my stupid jokes, and you make me feel like _me_ – like I'm better just being around you – and if you make me say any more of this rom-com shit, I'm going to puke."

"You make me better too." The Lorna-smile that Nicky liked second best – vulnerable and amazed and a little drunk around the edges – had crept back onto Lorna's face.

And Nicky thought that maybe Lorna was saying it back, as best as she could. Maybe this was their version of _I love you_.

"You gotta tell me what you're thinking, sometimes, kid. And I don't mean your opinion on skinny jeans or what insert-celebrity-here wore to the Emmys, but the important stuff. Those are the things about Lorna Morello that I want to know."

"I can be better, Nicky. I know I can."

"You be you, kid, and we'll take it from there."

Lorna bounced closer to her on the bed, knocking their shoulders together as she reached down into Nicky's lap to curl their fingers together.

Her eyes were shining again as she said, grinning, "You flipped your tray for me."

"I flipped my tray for you, yes. It was taco night and everything."

"That's the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me."

Even Lorna's giggle came out in that inexplicable Brooklyn-Boston hybrid that drove Nicky wild.

"That's kind of the only romantic thing anyone's ever done," Lorna went on, a little more sober, and it was sad that no one had ever bothered to chase Lorna before, that Nicky's outburst had to stand in as that first great act of love for her, but mostly it was hilarious, and suddenly they were collapsing with laughter on each other, gasping for breath.

Every time one of them started to regain composure, another look or muffled giggle would set them off again, until the COs marched over to shut them up, until they were crying, until their shirts were wet with tracks of tears and eyeliner as if a great flood had finally been released.

...

Time passed, and Lorna started relearning the rhythm of prison life, talking more, smiling more, filling her hours with more than moping in her bunk until the days streamed by almost easily again.

If people were still giving Morello a wide berth, they were at least becoming less vocal with their opinions about her, slowly turning their attention to newer scandals and tidbits of gossip.

Boo liked to make cracks about Nicky being a 'married woman' now, and flaunted her latest conquests as she asked Nicky if she'd like to borrow one of them to get a little action on the side.

Boo liked to pick on Lorna too, her remarks always off-color but stopping just short of truly offensive, so Nicky let them slide most of the time. No one was immune to Boo's mouth, and Nicky loved watching Lorna serve it right back to Boo in true Lorna-style, like a puppy biting at the ears of a huge Rottweiler.

But Nicky would never forget the afternoon she had seen Boo tear into two girls in the rec room for insulting Lorna a bit too freely.

Boo had slammed her fists down into her game of Solitaire and growled, "She might be a little maniac – dumb as a box full of rocks, too – but she's _our_ little maniac, so beat it before I come over there and pop that pimple you call a face."

The girls had scurried away, with Boo tutting after them, "Amateurs."

"Careful, Boo," Nicky had called from the doorway behind her, watching Boo's face fall as she realized she had been caught out. "People are going to start thinking you're human after all."

The day Lorna started shoveling spaghetti into her mouth so fast it hung halfway to her chin while she tried to chew – Soso sitting next to her and looking beyond traumatized – Nicky had to bury her head in her arms on the table and laugh until it hurt.

"You're disgusting," she finally managed, wiping her eyes carefully to avoid smearing her eyeliner everywhere.

"You love it," Lorna gargled around her mouth of food.

"You're goddamn right I do."

Nothing much had happened between her and Lorna since their big all-or-nothing talk. Nicky was letting Lorna set the pace of their relationship this time, determined not to push Lorna before she was ready, even if some days her patience wore thin and it took all of her willpower not to drag Lorna to the showers or the chapel or any dark corner and have her way with her.

One morning Lorna appeared in the doorway of her cube and chirped, "Piper wants to know if you're comin' to yoga with us."

"That line is never gonna work on me. No fucking way."

Lorna's voice got even more sing-songy, if that was possible. "Come to yoga with us, and I'll think about giving your headphones back."

"Headphones aren't much good without a radio, kid."

"The radio too, then."

Lorna pulled Nicky's radio from behind her back and waved it around temptingly in front of Nicky's nose. It was one of the least seductive moves Nicky had ever seen, and she was still ready to tear all of Lorna's clothes off. She knew when she was beat.

"All right, all right," she muttered. "The things I do for love."

"Do you love the radio, or do you love me?"

"Right now, the radio."

And Lorna pouted all the way down to Piper and Red's cube.

Piper was visibly excited when she saw that Lorna had successfully recruited their target, to the point that Nicky worried Piper was actually going to jump up and down and clap like a little girl who had just gotten a pony.

Red was there too, and Nicky stood under the full power of her reckoning, shifting her weight from leg to leg nervously, like she was bringing home a girl to meet her parents for the very first time. Which was kind of true, except Red and Lorna already knew each other, and her ma definitely approved.

"Lorna," Red said, never taking her eyes off of Nicky. "No job assignment yet? I've got something in mind. I'll see what I can do."

"Aww, thanks, Red! You've always been good to me."

"Thanks, Ma," Nicky mouthed as Piper and Lorna led her away, leaving Red shaking her head in their wake and chuckling to herself about her girls.

"Nicky's got a rockin' child's pose," Piper was telling Lorna as they walked to class, and that was the last straw.

As soon as Lorna got distracted by something else in the hallway, Nicky shoved Piper hard in the shoulder and sent her careening into the wall, holding her hands up innocently when Piper snapped her head around to glare.

"Tripped, Chapman. I swear. Lucky you were there to break my fall, eh?"

Piper was a little less chipper after that, much to Nicky's relief.

Yoga wasn't as unbearable with Lorna there. Nicky had insisted they stay at the back of the class, nowhere near Piper, and with Lorna constantly shaking with effort beside her, Nicky realized she might not be the worst one in class after all.

Boo and Alex had pulled up chairs behind them to blatantly ogle all of the bodies on display.

"Enjoying the show, Boo?" Nicky grinned as she looked at them from between her legs.

"If you could move your ass about a foot to the left, I'd be enjoying it a hell of a lot more."

"Soft eyes, ladies!" Yoga Jones called out in Nicky and Lorna's direction, raising her voice to lecture about the importance of Zen in a way that was clearly meant for the two of them.

After class, Lorna tugged Nicky away from the others and led her around a corner where the hallway was empty. She pushed the radio and headphones into Nicky's hands and reached up to twirl her fingers around in Nicky's split ends. Nicky would never admit it, but she liked when Lorna played with her hair.

"I love ya too, Nichols."

"I know."

She tried so hard to say it with all of Han's straight-faced swagger, but the pure happiness building inside of her at those simple words threatened to split her in two from the inside out, so she had to grin. And they were kissing each other again, the radio clattering to the ground between them because Nicky had more important things to do with her hands.

She knew there would come a day when Lorna was the one to drag her into the chapel.

Sometimes, from the corner of her eye, she caught Lorna looking at her like that, ducking her head away when she felt Nicky's answering gaze.

It was a look that said, _someday. _

It said, _it's only a matter of time_.

* * *

_Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge._

* * *

The End.

I used to write a healthy amount of fanfic back in high school, but I can say that this is easily the longest piece I've ever written (and completed) which makes me extremely proud. I'm not a big fiction writer. The amount I've written this summer is crazy to me and in no way normal – which I feel is fair to warn all of you lovely readers about.

So, what's next? As mentioned before, I'm planning an epilogue/follow-up for this story. It may or may not be titled "The Miseducation of Lorna Morello" and will probably contain all of the extra bits of fluff that I denied you in the main story.

I'm also toying around with ideas for another story, one with the description: _There are times when even Nicky Nichols needs rescuing, and Lorna proves herself surprisingly adept at saving the day. At least when makeup, mothers, or holding back someone else's hair is involved._

Both of these should come out sometime within the next decade. Probably.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review or send their feedback and encouragement in other ways. You sustain me. Seriously.


End file.
